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Before her thoughts could keep wandering down that path, Tristan stopped about ten feet away and faced her. His eyes were unreadable and she wished she knew why.
But then he closed his eyes and she stopped fingering his shirt to watch as his hands turned into claws with talons, his arms elongated, his nose turned into a snout, and wings sprouted from his back. His skin gradually turned black as scales appeared to form his dragon’s hide. In less time than it took to say Mississippi five times, he was a fifteen-foot tall dragon with shimmering black scales and piercing brown eyes.
Slitted eyes that were looking straight at her.
For a second, her heart rate ticked up. Seeing a dragon up close was a little more intimidating than she’d imagined. As the dragon opened his jaw a little, she could see his long, sharp teeth.
Teeth that could shatter her arm in the blink of an eye.
But as the dragon continued to stare at her, she realized she’d seen those eyes before, whenever Tristan’s dragon-half had been in control.
And the dragon’s eyes weren’t fierce or threatening. She might not be a dragon body language expert, but if she were to hazard a guess, she would say Tristan in dragon-form looked uncertain.
No doubt, it was because of her.
The fact that her strong, alpha dragonman was vulnerable right now went straight to her heart. She needed to erase his doubts and convince him of how beautiful he was with the sun glinting off his scales and half-raised wings. Someday, she hoped he would allow her to touch those wings and see if they were as smooth as they looked.
Confident her dragon wouldn’t hurt her, Melanie took one step and then another, giving Tristan plenty of time to jump and fly away if he felt he was a danger to her. She may not know everything about him, but she knew deep in her bones that Tristan MacLeod would never willingly harm her. Even if not for her sake, then at least for the sake of their child.
But the black dragon stayed put. When she was close enough, Tristan lowered his head and bumped his snout against her shoulder. Not hard, or she would be flying across the clearing, but enough to make her lose her balance and grab onto the dragon’s snout to stay standing.
Once she was solidly standing on two feet again, she dared to stroke Tristan’s nose. To her surprise, his scales weren’t slimy or sleek, but rather felt like hard, grooved leather.
Taking a deep breath, she finally looked into her dragon’s eyes. They were huge and a deep sepia brown, the color reminding her of dark, unpeeled potatoes.
Okay, that might not be the most romantic description in the world, but she still loved the deep color and slitted pupils of the dragon in front of her. Hell, she would love any color as long as it belonged to her dragon-shifter.
She didn’t know how long she stood there staring into her Tristan-slash-dragon’s eyes, but the dragon let out a chuff of warm air. The feeling against her skin snapped her out of her trance and she said, “Right. You need to leave.”
She placed her hands on either side of the dragon’s wide jaw and stroked. The dragon started humming and she smiled. Then she remembered what she wanted to say.
Putting on a stern expression, she said, “You come back to me alive, Tristan MacLeod, or I will be the one to bring you back to life just so I can kill you.”
She was convinced there was laughter in the dragon’s eyes and she grinned. On impulse, she kissed the dragon’s snout, gave him one last pat, and stepped back. “Now, go rescue that boy and show those dragon hunter bastards that it’s idiotic to mess with a Stonefire dragon-shifter.”
The dragon nodded, turned, and jumped into the air. Watching what had to be at least twenty-five thousand pounds of muscle and wings ascend into the sky was a beautiful sight to behold. All too quickly, Tristan was gone.
Rather than worry about what the dragon hunters might do to him, Melanie decided to put her faith in Tristan. Besides, there wasn’t anything she could do to help him. Well, she could get her ass to Samira’s place and eat something. The little dragon-shifter baby inside of her uterus was making her hungry.
Melanie took out Tristan’s cell phone and dialed Samira’s number. Her friend answered on the second ring. After arranging for Samira to come get her, Melanie hung up the phone, put on her jeans, socks, and shoes, and sat down on a nearby boulder.
Now, all she could do was wait.
ChapterEighteen
Forty-five minutes later, Tristan and two of his clan members were on their way to where Miles had last been seen, according to the boy’s friends.
Two of Stonefire’s Protectors, Kai and Zain, flew on either side of him. The clan’s highly skilled Protectors were tasked with getting Miles out alive, but it was Tristan’s job to make sure the boy’s inner dragon could be contained and brought under control.
Or, if worse came to worse, to try to coax Miles’ inner dragon enough to ensure the boy didn’t try to commit suicide. That was always a possibility when a young dragon-shifter was pushed to emotional and physical boundaries. Not that the dragon hunters would care.
Normally, Ella, a fellow teacher, would be the one to go and wrestle or soothe the teenager’s inner beast since she had been his teacher for far longer than Tristan had. But the female dragon-shifter was two months pregnant and she’d decided to avoid angering her mate by sitting this one out.
Not that he could blame her. A male dragon-shifter with a pregnant mate was not something you messed with. He was fast learning that himself.
Tristan’s wings missed a beat at that thought. Since when had he started to think of Melanie as his mate? Her being unafraid and accepting his dragon-form was doing strange things to his mind.
If there had ever been a way for her to convince him that she wasn’t like other humans, it would be for her to caress his hide while in dragon-form. If that hadn’t been enough, she’d then gone and kissed him on the snout.
